


Summer and the City

by WotanAnubis



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Solarpunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 15:46:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15537549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WotanAnubis/pseuds/WotanAnubis
Summary: In which Summer explores the ruins of an ancient civilization.





	Summer and the City

**Author's Note:**

> I blame the weather for this one.

It wasn't forbidden to go to the City. It wasn't even really taboo. It just wasn't really done. People felt there just wasn't anything there. A child might go to the City (or, more likely, get taken there by their caretakers), just to see what life used to be like, but beyond that there was no real purpose to venturing there.

Summer liked to go, though. Every couple of months, if she could find the time, she ventured into the City. There was always some ruin she hadn't seen yet, some building she hadn't explored, some colorful piece of junk to find. She always brought her bow and arrow, just in case. Humans no longer lived in the City and the animals had moved in. Summer didn't go to the City to hunt, but she also didn't relish the idea of being defenseless if she got attacked. It hadn't happened so far, but that didn't mean it couldn't.

Silence surrounded Summer as she walked along black, cracked streets. Probably they'd been whole once, but plants had worked their way into the ground and torn them apart. What once must have been just solid black, now crawled with unfettered green.

The buildings were much the same. Or what had been buildings, anyway. Crumbling ruins of concrete and steel and glass, overgrown by creeping plants burrowing into every little crack they could find. Or make.

People had lived here, once. A lot of people. More people than Summer could possibly imagine. Her own commune had a few hundred people and she knew most of them by name. Admittedly, she'd have to think pretty hard about quite a few of them, but she'd get there eventually. The City had housed... thousands. Tens of thousands. Maybe more. It was impossible to believe; all those people, all those crowds, all bottled up in the same space without knowing one another. They'd go insane. They must have. Surely, humans couldn't live like that. Or at least, live like that and stay human.

But the most remarkable thing about the City was that it wasn't _the_ City. There'd been countless cities just like it, with just as many people crammed into them, all over the world. And they'd lived and worked and... done whatever it was people in cities had done.

Summer sat down on an overgrown piece of concrete. She wondered if it the thing was supposed to have stood there or if it had simply fallen off the nearby ruin. She'd never know. It made for a pretty uncomfortable seat either way and the leaves covering it didn't help much.

Remnants of a poster still clung to a building on other side of the street. It showed a few beautiful people with beautiful smiles and the words **UT NOW!** in excited yellow. The bits of the poster that showed what the beautiful people were smiling so beautifully at hadn't survived. Some product or other, no doubt. Summer felt pretty confident the people of the City wouldn't have got all excited about a new philosophical principle or a breakthrough in photovoltaic integration.

Had it been useful, this thing that was _out now_? Had it been as beautiful as the people admiring it? Entertaining? Educational, maybe? She'd never know. But it wouldn't have been necessary. City people wouldn't have used such enthusiastic capital letters for anything that had been necessary.

For a moment, Summer considered tearing down the poster and taking it with her as a memento. She decided against it almost as quickly. Hung up on the broken wall like that, the poster was some kind of echo from before, suggesting things to people who could no longer understand what it was saying. But if she took it home with her, it'd be just another weird scrap of paper. No, better to leave it here. Maybe someone else would come along one day and wonder about the beautiful people and the thing they were so happy about. Or maybe they wouldn't.

Summer left her makeshift seat and wondered what to do next. If she was smart, she'd start heading back and maybe make it back to the commune by nightfall. If she'd had her bike, she certainly would have been back before dark, but the City's broken roads weren't exactly kind to bikes. If she kept on exploring, she'd have to spend the night in her tent. Which wouldn't be a particularly great trial, come to think of it. Certainly not compared to all the frowning she'd have to face once people learned she'd wasted a bunch of time wandering the City.

But hey, if she kept going, she'd probably be pushing into parts of the City where no human had walked for decades. Maybe longer. Who knew what she would find there?

More ruins covered in plants. More advertisements for stuff she didn't need and barely understood.

And, as it turned out, a herd of deer. Summer had found an area less littered with towering concrete. There were trees here, and wild flowers. And, of course, the creeping vines that grew everywhere in the City. There was also a lake here, of sorts. To Summer's eye, the lake didn't quite look like it belonged here, though she couldn't put her finger on why.

About half a dozen deer stood at the water's edge. Some drinking, some eating from the greenery, some looking around suspiciously. The moment she'd become aware of the animals, Summer had taken refuge behind some bushes. She been careful enough, and quiet enough, not to startle the deer into fleeing. She wondered if they'd noticed her or not. She wondered if City animals were still afraid of people or if they'd been so out of touch with humanity for so long they didn't see people as a threat any more.

Summer smiled and managed not to chuckle out loud. She remembered when she'd first gone to the City. She must have been... seven? Eight? Something like that. Eden, one of her caretakers back then, had taken her and a bunch of other kids to the City. Had pointed out all the decaying concrete, had shown how the plants were slowly destroying what was left of the City.

_"You see,"_ Eden had said, _"the City had been built for people, not for nature."_

Summer had laughed at that. She'd pointed out with the confident self-assurance of an eight year old (or possibly a seven year old) that people were part of nature because they were natural and so any place built for people must have been built for nature otherwise people wouldn't be able to live there. Because they were nature.

Eden had told her that she was right, that humans and nature were intertwined, but that the people of the City had forgotten that. Summer hadn't understood that. Now, a little less than twenty years later, she still wasn't sure if she understood that.

But whether the City had been built for nature or not didn't matter any more. Nature had taken the City back and now this unexpectedly open space served as a watering hole for a herd of wild deer instead of... whatever it was the City people had intended this place to be.

Summer withdrew from her hiding place as stealthily as she'd come. She barely dared to breathe in case one of the deer noticed her. She was almost clear when one of the deer turned its head towards her and looked at her. Summer froze for a moment, caught in the animal's stare, then continued walking slowly backwards. It was a deer, not a wolf. It probably wasn't going to attack.

The deer blinked at her a few times, then bent forward and drank from the lake.

Summer didn't see any other animals during her wanderings. Mostly because every time she thought she heard any, she deliberately went the other way. After all, the animals lived in the City, whereas she was just a curious intruder. It didn't seem right to bother them any more than she had to.

Eventually Summer found herself in a broad street where the remaining buildings had some very strange windows. Or at least, holes where windows should have been. The often seemed to run the full length of the ground floor, allowing anyone who walked past to look inside and see everything. Although these days, the only thing inside were overgrown empty shelves of all kinds.

Still... something about the weird, huge window-holes seemed familiar. Then it struck her. Of course. The distribution center had a space near the front of the building to display the more interesting items they had that day. Usually clothes brought by one of the wandering communes. Or, actually, Summer mostly noticed the distribution center display when it was showing clothes brought by nomads. They were so much more practical for her own wandering ways.

So, these were distribution centers, were they? Or some City equivalent of distribution centers. What had they given out? Clothes, certainly. Even City people had needed clothes. Maybe they'd also held inventories of... whatever that poster had proclaimed was _out now_.

And food. Naturally. All the food they could've grown. Until, one day, the oceans had risen too high, the desert had spread too far, the water had become too toxic, the air too difficult to breathe. And then that'd been that. No more food. Not enough to feed the City. Any City. All those hundreds of thousands, dead.

Summer didn't know how the City people had reacted when their society could no longer ignore its coming demise. She doubted they'd gone quietly. If nothing else, humans wanted to survive. But the numbers just hadn't worked out. Too many people had abused the Earth for too long and there was no amount of brilliant innovation that could conjure up enough food out of barren soil and poisonous rivers to feed everyone.

Summer shook her head, trying to dislodge the thought. She liked seeing the City abandoned and reclaimed by nature. She didn't much care to imagine what its actual last days had been like. It wouldn't have been nearly as pretty.

Something glittered in the darkness of one of the ruins. Summer headed for it, partly at a whim, partly to shake the thoughts of food riots. She hesitated before crossing the threshold, but what remained of the building didn't look like it was about to collapse on top of her.

It was a robot, sleek and gleaming. Plants had grown over it as well, as they had over everything else. Roots burrowed into its joints and a red flower grew from its right eye. Summer looked it over without touching any of the plantlife. The robot looked entirely human. Besides its metal shell, it didn't appear to have any features or things that made it obviously not human. So... was it a machine made to be human? What was the point of that?

Something glowed somewhere underneath the foliage covering the robot's back. A dim, dull, red light that brightened and faded. Summer reached for it and found it to be a button. The sensible thing was probably to just leave it. To let the robot lie in its flowery tomb. But... she kind of really wanted to know what would happen if she pressed it, so...

"Exiting Stand-By Mode. Please Wait..."

Summer jumped back from the robot. Things whirred and hummed while some kind of life returned to the lifeless metal. Its left eye lit up, casting a pleasant glow on the flower growing from its right.

"ERROR. No ID Chip detected," the robot intoned. "Forgive me, valued customer, I cannot address you by name."

"It's Summer," said Summer.

"I appear to have suffered some damage, valued customer," the robot continued. "I have sent a status update to Maritech management and expect repair and maintenance drones to be here momentarily so that the damage may be repaired and I can serve you more fully, valued customer."

"Is that the name of the people who lived here?" Summer asked. "The, uh, Customers? Or was that the name of the City?"

"Dear valued customer, while we wait for the drones, why not take a look around the store? Maritech exists to provide you with all the excellent, innovative products no modern person could do without."

Summer looked around at the empty shelves.

"I think you're out of everything," she said.

"Our most sincere apologies, valued customer. We did not anticipate that our splendid products would prove so popular. Rest assured, the warehouse is aware of the situation and is working hard to get new product on our store shelves as soon as possible."

"I don't think they're coming," said Summer. "I don't think anyone's coming."

"Don't worry, valued customer. Our dedicated Maritech personnel will not rest until your every need is met. Nothing matters more to us than your satisfaction, valued customer."

Summer sighed and reached down to the robot's back. When she pressed the button again, the light faded in its one functional eye and the machine fell silent.

Summer dithered uncertainly for a few moments. The robot hadn't been a person, hadn't even been an animal, hadn't understood anything, and yet... she felt like she couldn't just leave it. It looked too human to just abandon without doing... _something_.

Summer put a hand on the machine's forehead and closed her eyes.

"May the Earth accept you and give you rest."

It wasn't much, but there really wasn't much else to be done. Summer withdrew her hand and left the building, leaving the robot lying in its shroud of leaves.

She wasn't sure how she felt about the whole thing. Except weirded out. The robot had spoken her language. Well, that wasn't too much of a surprise. The remnants of posters and boards littering the City were written in her language as well. But even though it had spoken her language, it hadn't really said anything Summer could comprehend.

Oh, she'd got a few things. Mostly about the robot needing repairs and needing more stuff to come in for distribution, but there'd just been something... _off_... about the whole quasi-conversation. Probably the people of the City wouldn't have found anything strange about it. After all, they'd built it. For some reason.

There were days, sometimes, when Summer thought she understood the people of the City. Or at least, came as close to understanding them as it was possible to for someone born a long time after their demise. They were human, they'd had human motivations. They'd obviously been deeply flawed in a very human kind of way. They couldn't have been that different.

And then they'd gone and built a robot to spout gibberish at them. Gibberish that the City people had probably understood just fine.

No, Summer didn't understand them. Not really. Most likely never would.

No wonder people didn't like anyone going here. It wasn't that it was dangerous, it was a relic of some other time, belonging to some other humanity. It was the grand mausoleum of people who must've seen the death of their civilization coming and had decided to do nothing to stop it until it had been far too late. It was important to remember them, their mistakes, but... maybe it was a bit crass to keep poking the carcass.

As she walked out of the City, Summer stopped to take a lookg back at the ruins. Maybe this mood would pass and she'd go back and explore some more one day. Or maybe this would be the last time she'd ever lay eyes on the City. 

Concrete and steel towered defiantly against the sky, proclaiming humanity's total domination of this place. 

Crumbling, decaying. 

Overgrown.


End file.
